


1-12 Tiny Wonder

by iippo



Series: Steven Universe Renaissance [12]
Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen, alternative universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:40:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25936819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iippo/pseuds/iippo
Summary: During a mission to the Sky Spire, Steven tries to convince Amethyst to notice the myriad tiny wonders all around them.
Series: Steven Universe Renaissance [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1796686
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7





	1-12 Tiny Wonder

**Author's Note:**

> An alternative universe. See series page for details.

It was a partly sunny late morning in Beach City. Greg Universe was playing checkers on the beach with Amethyst, the long-time friend of his late wife. Steven, Greg’s son and Amethyst’s fellow-Crystal Gem, refereed the game from a high life guard’s chair. Amethyst pondered her move and went for the kill.

“Ha, take that!” Amethyst gloated as he captured one of Greg’s pieces.

“Wow, Amethyst, I'm impress-,” Greg cheered and got hit with a water balloon mid-sentence.

“Now it's your move, dad,” Steven said from his referee seat, lap full of water balloons, poised to mete out his watery judgement on anyone losing a piece.

“Steven, are the water balloons really necessary?” Greg asked, spitting small bits of plastic out of his mouth.

“Yeah, this way the moves really matter,” Steven explained the obvious.

“But it's checkers! Every single move matters!” Greg tried to explain the finer points of checkers strategy.

Amethyst was getting impatient, and she teased Greg while twirling a strand of her wet hair around her finger: “It sounds like someone's being a sore loser.”

Greg grinned, joining in on the ribbing. “Oh I'm not a sore loser...” he corrected with a flair of his hand as he used a piece to jump over all of Amethyst’s pieces, capturing them all in one move, “...because I just won the gaa-ame!”

Amethyst stared at the boardand exclaimed: “Whaaa—?!” She had focused too hard on her offense and hadn’t realised she had left her defenses wide open, missing all the convenient small spaces between her pieces that allowed Greg to leap-frog over all of them. But: the rules were the rules. ”Here it comes!” She said with a smile and spread her arms out as Steven pelted her with the rest of his water balloons. Amethyst laughed and fell backwards, laying on her back in the sand. “Aaah! Ha, feels good to lose,” she said.

Steven and Greg laughed.

Greg stood up. “Well, thanks for the break guys, but it’s time for me to get back to the old grind,” he said and looked at the sky. There was still plenty of day left, and while he was fine to close the car wash for an hour to hang out with Steven – being his own boss and all – he didn’t feel like it would be fair to his customers to close shop willy-nilly for a whole day whenever he felt like it.

Steven jumped down from his seat and hugged Greg before he left. “I think it’s time for us to get back to old grind too,” Steven said to Amethyst, wanting to emulate his biggest hero.

But Amethyst wasn’t thrilled with this idea. She had planned on spending the day doing not-work. 

“Sorry dude, I’m gonna go check out what’s new at the city dump,” Amethyst said and headed inside the beach house.

“But what about our responsibilities? We should be catching monsters,” Steven followed her in, pestering her. “Wasn’t that what you’d do with mom?” He asked as they had entered the house, and glanced at the painting of Rose Quartz hanging on the wall above the door.

Amethyst turned to look at Steven and her eyes also took in the painting at the same time. Her eyes drifted down to the shape of Steven’s gem bulging under his t-shirt. She frowned. Rose had been way more chill about missions than Amethyst, wanting to hang out with humans more than she cared about catching gem monsters. It felt unfair that now she was Steven and bothering her, Amethyst, about not going on missions enough.

“Fine, we can go check out the Sky Spire for monsters,” she said begrudgingly and trodded to the warp pad. Steven ran up behind her with his arms in the air, cheering.

Amethyst activated the warp when Steven was only barely on the device and he stumble-floated in the warp stream.

They arrived on the warp pad closest to the Sky Spire and Steven, who hadn’t yet corrected his position, fell out of the warp on his back with an “Ooomph!”

”Alright then, let’s go,” Amethyst rushed Steven, who was still only getting on his feet.

” Whooaaa... Is this the Sky Spire?” Steven asked, taking in the vista. Pink and grey mountains rose from a sea of white fluffy clouds as far as the eye could see. A stairway led upwards from the warp pad towards the peak, vanishing into the vegetation.

“Yup. So we’ll just go up to the top and come back down, and catch monsters if we find any.” Amethyst said, heading towards the stairs, her pace quick.

And although they both had short legs, Steven struggled to keep up with her, for he wanted to take in all the intricate details in the surroundings: the colors, the plants, the pillar of carved stone with flat rocks stacked on top as if to mark an important location.

“There sure are a lot of stairs,” Steven observed when they reached the first landing. He wondered who had built them all and why.

Amethyst mistook Steven’s comment for complaining about the mission and turned to snap at him. “You can just go home if you don’t-“ she started but she was interruted by a rustling sound in the bushes next to them. Amethyst summoned her whip just in time, when a mountain goat jumped out of the bush and onto a near-by rock. It was chewing a thistle.

“Oh wow! Is that a magical goat guardian?” Steven asked in awe, but Amethyst was already vanishing her whip.

“No,” she answered, already on edge with Steven’s incessant chatter. “It’s just a goat. Come on.”

She brushed past the goat, which didn’t take too kindly to being jostled. It ran up behind Amethyst and butted her in the back with its horns, sending her sprawling to the ground. “Aaaahh!” She yelled in surprise as she totally ate it.

Steven gasped and ran to her, positioning himself between the fallen gem and the animal. “Are you okay?” He asked Amethyst, and turned to the goat. “Bad mountain goat!” He chided, but it didn’t care. Amethyst got up on her own and dusted herself off, with a storm cloud gathering in her mind. She wanted this mission over and done with.

They headed off again, and the goat followed them. But between Amethyst stopping to shoo the goat away and Steven stopping for anything and everything, they made slow progress.

In the middle of a ladder carved directly into the mountainface Steven, who was climbing first, stopped to show the interesting veins of minerals in the rock to Amethyst coming up behind him and who was getting all of the dust he kicked off in her eyes. When they were crossing a shallow stream by hopping from stone to stone, Steven stopped to point out the fish swimming in figure eights, and Amethyst ran into him and fell backwards in the water.

Irritated, Amethyst took the lead again on the level path under the cool canopy of trees, but when she looked behind her and found no Steven following her – for he had stopped to look at a beautiful glittering insect crawling up a tree trunk – she ran back, frightened that he had got hurt. So when she found him just standing there, she got annoyed and told him to keep up, completely ignoring his attempt of explaining that the bug looked like a jewel.

Steven realised that she was mad, sighed and began to sing. “All I wanna do, is point out to you, a tiny wonder, a _tiny wonder_! All I wanna be, is someone who helps you see, a tiny wonder.” 

“Come _on_ already!” Amethyst interrupted, ignoring his song.

Steven plodded after her, singing as he walked. “Oh it would be great, and I wish you'd just wait, to see the thing that I have got spotted. If you gave it a chance, and just a short glance, you could see some kind of cool new thingy... You might even like exploring together, and if you don't it won't take forever, but if it were me, I'd really want to see, a tiny wonder, a tiny wonder! All I wanna do, is point out to you, a _tiny wonder~_.”

They got to a rope bridge and began to cross. Steven found the sensation of walking on the slightly rubbery, yielding bridge very pleasant, and began to bounce. Amethyst held on the ropes about to lose her temper again, when she realised that it actually _was_ fun to bounce on the rope bridge and instead of blowing her top, she joined Steven in the jumping. They grinned at each other madly, making the entire bridge look like well done spaghetti with their ruckus. And to Amethyst’s delight, the jumping also repelled the goat, which finally ran away from them across the jostling bridge and off ahead of them.

“Wait up, Steven Jr.!” Steven called after the goat and ran to catch it.

The goat leapt off the edge of the broken pass and onto a stone platform floating in the air. It hopped from one floating stone to the next until it reached the bottom entrance of a spiraling passage that led to the top of the Sky Spire.

Steven, following the animal, was about to hop to the first platform when he felt something wrap around his midriff and halt his progress. Amethyst had summoned her whip and caught him with it.

“Wait, Steven! I'm not sure you can make those jumps,” Amethyst said from the other end of the whip.

“Oh,” Steven noticed that Amethyst probably was right; despite his close familial ties with the goat, he hadn’t inherited its amazing ability of navigating the mountainous landscape. “Any ideas?” He asked her as she walked up to him.

Amethyst was pleased for the opportunity to shine. “Well, I was thinking something like, _this_!” She said and suddenly hoisted Steven in the air and threw him onto the first stone platform, quickly jumping after him. They landed on the grassy surface of the platform at almost the same time.

“Oh wow, Amethyst, that was a really good idea!” Steven admired.

“Hah, I know, I'm full of 'em,” She bragged.

Something glittering in the air caught Steven’s eye. An incredibly beautiful insect was flying gracefully past them towards the top of the mountain. Steven wanted to follow it. The next platform was closer and Steven jumped to it with ease; but unfortunately his sudden leap disturbed the platform he and Amethyst had been standing on, sending it bobbing, and the movement made Amethyst lose her balance and fall down the ravine.

“Amethyst!” Steven yelled but Amethyst simply yelled “aaaaaaaahhhh!” back. She managed to summon her whip and fling it blindly upwards, and fortunately it wrapped around a floating stone and she was able to halt her fall.

“Amethyst! Are you okay?” Steven called to her, peering over the edge of the platform.

Amethyst grunted as she exerted her strength to pull herself back up. She rested, panting, on the platform before standing up. The sunny spell from jumping on the rope bridge was gone and her storm clouds were back. The glittering insect had vanished from sight too.

Steven noticed she wouldn’t appreciate any further comments and hopped ahead as far as he could go, and waited for her patiently at the last platform as the last jump was too wide. She landed next to him and without a word threw him across to the bottom of the spiraling passage, jumped after him, and started ahead up the steps.

They climbed the stairs winding around the peak of the mountain in silence and made it to the top. Amethyst was still stewing in her foul mood, but Steven had forgot all about it during the long climb, and was just excited to see the Sky Spire.

The stairs ended inside a dome-like building, from which a paved pathway extended towards the middle of a shallow pool.

“Woooww!” He looked around in awe, and then spotted a small structure at the center. “Hey, look at that!” Steven ran over to it and found Steven Jr. the mountain goat standing next to it. “It's a tiny temple!” He announced and knelt to peer inside the window. The temple was furnished with tiny furniture, as if for two residents.

Amethyst leant against the doorframe. There had been no monsters on the mountain, and there was going to be no monsters on the way down either, and this mission had all been a huge, boring, tiring waste of time.

“Well, let’s head back,” Amethyst said.

Steven was too engrossed in the tiny structure to register what Amethyst had said. “Check it out, it's even got a tiny bedroom, and tiny bongos, and a tiny baby book.” He giggled and tried to reach his hand in to touch the stuff.

Amethyst, trying to be patient but finding it very hard, swatted at a bug that had started buzzing about her head. She wanted to go home to her own bedroom and her own bongos. Another bug was buzzing about Steven and even bit him in the elbow. “Ow!” He yelped and waved the bug away.

Amethyst walked over to the temple. “Steven! It’s time to leave,” she said, making sure she got his attention.

“Aww, already? But we just got here!” Steven whined. “My legs are still jelly from climbing all those stairs. And look, you haven’t seen the tiny video game console in-“

“I don’t care! We’re leaving!” Amethyst snapped. “I’m tired, this whole mission has been a waste of time, there’s no monsters here, and you haven’t even-“

They were yelling past each other and even the mountain goat began bleating in distress so that neither of them definitely could listen to what the other was saying, until they were all cut off by something that sounded like an angry helicopter. Steven, Amethyst and the goat all turned to look towards the edge of the cliff and saw the shape of a huge bug-monster ascending, the beating of its wings making a deafening noise, only matched by its equally deafening roar.

“Take cover!” Amethyst yelled as she shoved Steven and the goat inside the domed building with one hand and summoned her whip with the other.

“Wait!” Steven yelled and struggled to get back towards the center of the pool.

The monster was shaped like a huge rhinoceros beetle, and it charged Amethyst with its horn while kicking up a huge wind with its wings. Amethyst dodged out of the way of its attack, and slashed it with her whip. The monster turned to white light and fell apart. Two small insects fell to the ground and ran inside the tiny temple.

Amethyst ran to follow them and cracked her whip to split the structure open to capture them. But instead of her attack landing on the temple, her whip got wrapped around Steven’s forearm: he had ran up and positioned himself in front of the temple after the insects went inside, arm extended in a futile attempt to summon the pink shield that was his gem weapon.

“Amethyst!” He yelped from the pain of the gem weapon digging into his skin, tears welling in his eyes from the sting. Amethyst was so shocked and horrified she hadn’t noticed Steven, that she had almost attacked Steven, that her whip disappeared immediately and she stopped dead in her tracks.

“Just, stop. And _look_ ,” Steven pleaded, pointing inside the temple. “They aren’t dangerous monsters, they are tiny, and wondrous, and _scared_ ,” he explained. “They live here, and they were probably just defending their home.”

Amethyst knelt beside the temple to look inside. The two glittering insects were huddled together in the middle of the room, trembling in fear.

Steven sat down beside her. “I understand we have to catch and bubble the monsters so that they will stop hurting the Earth, but these guys aren’t hurting anyone. Isn’t there anything else we can do?”

Amethyst looked at Steven and smiled a tired, kind smile.

“You’re right. I have an idea,” she said and got up. She dug her hands under the foundation of the structure and with great effort, created a huge bubble around the entire building. She had to reach to tap the top of it, sending it off.

“There. Their home can be their bubble,” she explained as Steven looked at her starry-eyed.

“You ready to head home?” Amethyst asked Steven. “You can show me those fish in the river.”

Steven nodded with a grateful smile. They headed down the stairs side by side.


End file.
